Friday, May 17, 2013

Part 78 - Leaving the Sierras

Leaving the Red’s Meadow
Café behind, Lucky Man and I walked back past the mule and horse corrals and
reconnected with the PC Trail. After the trail crossed the San Joaquin
River on a footbridge, the trail split; choosing the right-hand fork gave the
hiker the opportunity to visit Devil’s Postpile and Rainbow Falls, and then
reconnected with the PCT farther up the trail. Lucky Man chose this
alternate trail, while I stayed on the main trail. I had seen pictures of
the falls and the Devil’s Postpile, and didn’t feel the need to visit them up
close.

Moving towards Tuolumne
Meadows, the trail passed through Agnew Meadows and entered the Ansel Adams
Wilderness area, a stunning section of the John Muir Trail dotted with many
small to medium-size lakes, the most notable of which was Thousand Island Lake.
On stepping stones, I crossed over the outlet of Garnet Lake, walked
around Ruby Lake, and within a few hundred yards was standing at the outlet of
Thousand Island Lake.

The outlet to the lake was shallow and was also
easily crossed on stepping stones placed in the waters decades ago by the trail
builders. Thousand Island Lake itself must be relatively shallow as
numerous little islands were sprinkled throughout the body of water, most of
which had a few trees growing on them which resemble tufts of hair growing on
the sides of a man’s bald head.

Beyond Thousand Island
Lake, there was one more pass to cross over – Donohue Pass at an elevation of
11,056 feet. It wasn’t the highest pass I had climbed, but by and far, it
was the toughest for me to get over. I simply could not get sufficient
oxygen into my lungs; subsequently, I did the Old Man Shuffle all the way up
the climb. At the summit, I could see Lyell Canyon stretching out before
me and I camped for the evening at the head of this canyon, a few hundred yards
below massive Lyell Glacier.

This glacier is the
largest glacier in Yosemite National Park. It was inspiring to see it up
close, as it is a massive sheet of ice that is slowly creeping down the mountain
at the rate of about twenty feet a year, but it’s also a glacier that is dying,
and rangers in the park estimate that the glacier will have disappeared within
a few decades as a result of environmental warming, either man-made or just as
a natural occurrence in nature.

My campsite for the
night signaled the accomplishment of another major milestone on the long hike
to Canada – the end of the Sierra Mountains. There will be no more high
passes to climb, no more snowfields to slog through, no more death-defying
rivers to cross – well, maybe a few more rivers in Washington, but for now, the
High Sierras are behind me, and I breathed a great sigh of relief. The
walk for the next ten miles will be through the luxuriant summer growth of
grassy meadows that front the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River.

I left early this
morning, anxious to cover the last remaining miles to Highway 120 and the
Tuolumne Meadows Store. The path through the meadows and along the river
was filled with day hikers who were seeking to make the three-hour trip from
the highway to the base of Lyell Mountain, to either camp in the vicinity of
the mountain or to return the same way they came before the day ended.

If
I were visiting Tuolumne Meadows with family, I, too, would be like the day
hikers, seeking to see as much of this part of Yosemite Park as possible with
the time constraints that limited vacation time imposes upon travelers.
By 11:00 a.m., I had reached highway 120, and turned left and walked the
half mile to the convenience store that served hikers and park visitors
alike.